I've noticed some people using alternatives - .ts, .mkv - good for you. Could you imagine what would happen if everyone did that? Far less space on the server, which translates down to less HDD space for all of us, without losing (and sometimes gaining) quality.

So come on folks, re-encode those DVDs as MKV or ts using a better encoder. Can't do much about the audio, though. Even if you convert it to something better, it's still lossy...

So right now I'm moving files around so that I can dedicate a 3TB HDD to torrents - because of the massive file sizes taken up by all these damn DVDs. But in my collection? Not a DVD to be found. All re-encoded to mkv with the audio converted to flac even though that part doesn't help anything - but hey, it's the click of a button.

I use H.264 in an mkv container with FLAC audio in Handbrake. So MKV/FLAC is the end result. .ts is probably better, but it's also a lot bigger, and considering the quality (or lack of) of many of these videos, almost any decent encoder would be fine.

Some of the videos, though, are broadcast quality, and though I still use MKV, I appreciate that some people use .ts

VOB/MKV/TS are all just containers, it is how the contents are encoded that makes the difference.
What you are actually talking about is re-encoding MPEG2 into MPEG4.
MPEG4 is an extension of MPEG2, it gives better quality at lower bitrates, but at higher bitrates is essentially the same as MPEG2.

All available video is lossy, you really would be complaining about the size if it wasn't!

Encoding a raw source as MPEG4 might make sense, but re-encoding is re-encoding, and that means a loss of quality just the same as re-encoding lossy audio. So "without losing (and sometimes gaining) quality" is clearly not true, whether it is noticeable is another question, but it will result in a loss of quality.

And why convert the audio to flac? That only serves to increase the size, why not just use the original audio with no re-encoding?

Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die,
Then other times I think you ought to be buried alive.

Jimmy, a hand held video taken from the 23rd row in 1983 isn't worth a discussion of quality, but a file size of 4+ gigabytes reduced to 1 is. Especially in light of the fact that the seedboxes are nearly full and we've come to the point of deleting stuff. And yeah, I know that people say that re-encoding can't improve quality, but trust me, with the right equipment you will (sometimes) see a difference. And if you don't, the reduced file size alone makes it worth it, unless you can afford unlimited storage space.

Quote:

I don't mind DVDs, unless the original video source was a video file in the first place.

If the discussion is just about storage space, then ok, I take your point, but to say that you don't lose quality and even gain quality is just plain wrong! Whatever the equipment, it is wrong!
You might not 'perceive' any loss, you might even 'perceive' a gain, but it isn't there. Trust me.

I made the comments because a lot of people on torrent sites do care about quality, and I didn't want them going away and re-encode all of their DVDs thinking that they weren't reducing the quality. Most torrent sites won't even accept re-encoded video for that very reason.

And, actually, you might not realise it, but it can take a higher bitrate to encode a poor quality source than a good one. Two things that MPEG has a real problem with are detail and movement. A poor quality, grainy video might look poor to the eye, but to the encoder all of that 'grain' is moving detail that it has to encode. And such sources usually degrade more noticeably than good ones. Trust me.

Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die,
Then other times I think you ought to be buried alive.

So it makes sense to you guys to, say, record stuff off digitally off TV, then make a compilation on DVD? I see HD recordings here presented as MP2/MP3. High quality reduced to the lowest?

No, HD footage should not be down sampled to dvd format.
And dvd's should only be made of real mpg2 footage, I did see some dvd's
here that were made with stuff from Youtube...I deleted them after downloading.

Besides sound and vision quality (or not), I like cd/dvd and blu-ray because you don't need to upgrade your pc, for instance, with 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 codecs, 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 players, etc...

I have 2 pc and one mac and it's not enough to play correctly a file !!

... without losing (and sometimes gaining) quality. So come on folks, re-encode those DVDs as MKV or ts

Which I responded to, now you say:

paperdragon wrote:

So it makes sense to you guys to, say, record stuff off digitally off TV, then make a compilation on DVD? I see HD recordings here presented as MP2/MP3. High quality reduced to the lowest?

But nobody suggested making DVDs from HD sources, although whilst HD/Blu-ray is getting more popular, there are still a lot of people who only want SD. But granted, they would be better made from SD sources.
And what is wrong with making DVDs from SD TV anyway? I do that without any re-encoding because it is the same format. I can author the MPEG2 files straight from my Vu+ box with no loss of quality.

What exactly are you saying?

Sometimes I think that you're too sweet to die,
Then other times I think you ought to be buried alive.

I don't mind DVDs, unless the original video source was a video file in the first place.

Like anything before around 1985? And a lot of stuff after?

No. Video files did not exist in 1985. That was a decade of video existing as analog videotape, not as data files.

I meant that (except for personal use) one should avoid authoring a DVD from a video file source - such as an mp4 video from Vimeo or YouTube - since reencoding that as a DVD introduces an added step of degradation.

Like Rat says above, "I did see some dvd's here that were made with stuff from Youtube...I deleted them after downloading."

Jimmy, I'm not moving any goalposts because as far as I knew, this isn't a debate. It's simply a discussion which began with a simple question. If you want to be defender of all things DVD go right ahead, but no one is attacking it. Making compilation DVDs from TV sources is something that happens here, that makes no sense to me. Look at all that stuff that was broadcast when Bowie died. Hours of news reports recorded off TV and then for some reason I don't understand, put on DVD. 30 minutes of clips at 4.7 GB? Really?

Those recordings would have been better if encoded at H.264 and made into an MKV or ts file, but DVD just happens to be the fallback position here, and I think there are better options for stuff like that, especially when the seedboxes are full and people don't have unlimited storage, even with flippant remarks such as "get a bigger HDD" as if it were the last word in the discussion. .

To me the issue really is keeping the original quality and not sacrificing it just for the sake of size ... but there is another side to the coin, bloating does nothing for quality and does take up an unnecessary amount of HDD space. I see lots of video, DVD and Blu-ray, that is far bigger than it needs to be. I think this is mainly because people don't understand what they are doing and think that if it has a massive bitrate and fills the disc then it is somehow better, which is a bit like re-encoding a 128 kbps mp3 as 320 kbps.
For instance I wouldn't expect 30 minutes of DVD from TV to be any bigger than 1.5 GB.

Btw, I'm not a defender of all things DVD, it's more a case of letting the source determine the format, wherever possible I use lossless transfer so the output format is necessarily the same as the source.